KISS - Complete Escapism!
by MICHAEL A. BECK
(Mobile Production Monthly_v2_i11)

Lighting Designer: Sean 'Motley' Hackett
Lighting Company: Epic Production Technologies

It's hard to imagine the depth of the cave one would have to live in to not be aware of the legendary showmanship of KISS. These guys have always been all wholly show and nothing else. Like the music or not, you have to love the way this show peaks at the first note of the first song and never lets up until the house lights come back up. Minus the video, the show has many of the same "shock and awe" elements as it did back in the late 70's, and in some cases it actually produces some of the effects in much the same way.

Walking through the loading dock to the stage in Atlanta's Phillips Arena, it was a bit mystifying to see an old dry ice fogger. While that wasn't the method of delivery for all of the fog in the show, it did play a legitimate part in the process along side of the cryo-fog that was used as well. It was, according to one crew member, part of a desire to have parts of the show performed as they were back in the beginning.

There were several such aspects of the show that were designed to maintain a connection to the earlier days of this phenomenon. Chief among them was pyro, and it was only fitting that the legendary Peter "Pyro Pete" Cappadocia was on the job. Where you would have expected a show like this to call for a nonstop artillery barrage, Pete took a different approach. He explained, "Right now we're up to about 400 pieces. When we started we had about 280 pieces. But we’Äôre battling this huge video display out there and even though they're turning down the wall and the lights for the video cues, we still needed to bring out more stuff. So if we had eight pieces on a given cue, we're now using 12." Pete when on to say, "You can have too much of a good thing though. We have a lot of wow in the show. But I'd rather have ten cues of 40 pieces then to have 40 cues with ten pieces."

While the overall pyro presentation was truly impressive, it was the daring placement of the colored flames on either side of the platform on the downstage truss that seemed most striking. At one point during the show, bassist Gene Simmons was snatched from his position at mid-stage to the fore-mentioned areal platform. While Simmons was up there, Pete unleashed four green colored flame units.

In keeping with the non-stop aggressive nature of the show, Pete wanted to never look backward with his effects. "I try not to show the crowd the same thing twice. I like to layer it. That's a challenge. We've got a lot of stuff that's custom made for us and that helps us to keep every cue fresh."

The lighting rig was also what one might expect out of a KISS show. It was a massive canopy of light designed by Australian based Sean "Motley" Hackett during a run of festival shows back in the spring. "Yeah, we were doing those festivals and I was just carrying a Grand MA and plugging into the systems that we had at each show," Hackett told us. "It really was a great way to try out new ideas before I committed to a system for the tour."

Both Hackett and Production Manager Patrick Whitley (who had left for Trans-Siberian Orchestra by the time we got to the tour) were looking to put up an 80's type wall of lights with lots of ACL's However, the video presentation was so bright that the ACL's never could have competed, so the decision was made to go with VL-3500 Wash's and VL3000 Spots. The rig was rounded out with and upstage array of Syncrolite B-52's that hit like hammers and added sensational highlight to every scene they were used in. It was all flown off a system of straight truss. This decision was made to maintain visual continuity with the 60 foot wide video wall, the wall of 52 video boxed used to replace the cliche wall of Marshall stacks on the upstage line.

One thing that Hackett was particularly sensitive to was over moving his movers. "I don't have a lot of movement in this show." he told us. "I do some sweep outs and roll downs and I have the Sychros doing some ballyhooing in the first song and then the whole thing goes nuts during "Rock & Roll All Night" at the end. I find that when you do too much of that stuff, the show winds up getting pretty boring real fast."

Apart from the movement in the beginning and the end, Hackett is mindful to keep his ego in his pocket and out up big colors and chorus looks. This allows the rest of the show to do what it's there to do... within rock solid frames of light. In short, he lights the money!

Did we mention there was video in this show? The primary display was a 60 foot wide NocturneV9 wall flown upstage. On the stage was the array of video boxes each of which were loaded with 16 V9 tiles. Video Director Dave Neugebauer did an amazing job of interlacing IMAG and video content together for a look that was nothing short of thrilling. And while we'd love to say more about the video look in this show, what more can be said than OMG!!!

As one can imagine this production was gag heavy. The show had four scissor lift risers as well as one out at the mix position. The Drum lift and the lift at the mix were both rigged with rotating platforms. The drum lift placed drummer Eric Singer positioned at the bottom center of the video wall during a dazzling solo that made for a spectacular image.

The show had two fly gags. One was the snatch unit that was discussed earlier in this story. It was a straight vertical lift that took Gene Simmons from mid-stage to a platform in truss in roughly two seconds. It was easily missed if you didn't know just when it happened. The other fly gag picked Paul Stanley up off of the off stage left riser and flew him out to the lift platform at the mix.

In addition to everything mentioned so far there was also a confetti shot that caused a whiteout condition in the room.

At one point during this show, Paul Stanley addressed the crowd saying, "There are bands out there that are completely focused on the problems that we are facing today. They will tell you who to vote for, how to spend your money and how to live your life. If that is what you're looking for, you're in the wrong damned place. We are here to offer an escape from that for one night."

The show was as close to complete sensory overload as this writer has ever seen. And the escape was a complete success.

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